JC Religious Education cheat sheet

Dei Verbum (Vatican II, 1965) defines revelation as God's self-communication completed in Christ; revelation is both the deeds and the words of salvation history, not words alone.

Two senses of tradition: the singular 'Tradition' (the living transmission of the Gospel in the Spirit) versus plural 'traditions' (theological, liturgical, and disciplinary forms that can develop or be reformed).

Scripture and Tradition form one sacred deposit of the Word of God entrusted to the Church; the Magisterium serves that deposit rather than standing above it (DV 10).

Four senses of Scripture: literal (author's intention), allegorical (what concerns Christ), moral/tropological (how to act), anagogical (eternal destiny); the spiritual senses presuppose and depend on the literal.

Two senses of inspiration: divine causality (God as principal author) and the human author as true, subordinate, instrumental author; both operate in every text.

Inerrancy is predicated of the biblical books 'for the sake of our salvation' (DV 11), which directs interpretation toward saving truth rather than incidental factual detail.

Canon: 46 Old Testament and 27 New Testament books in the Catholic canon; the deuterocanonical books (e.g., Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, 1-2 Maccabees) are canonical for Catholics but not for most Protestants.

Three stages of Gospel formation: the historical Jesus, oral preaching and witness of the apostles, and the written Gospels (DV 19); form criticism studies stage two, redaction criticism stage three.

Senses of 'literal' in modern Catholic exegesis follow Aquinas and the Pontifical Biblical Commission: the literal sense is what the inspired human author intended, so genre analysis is indispensable.

Divine simplicity: God is not composed of parts, so attributes such as justice, mercy, and wisdom are identical with the divine essence and with one another, differing only by our mode of conceiving.

Divine immutability and eternity: God does not change, yet is not static; classical theism defines eternity as the simultaneous and complete possession of endless life (Boethius), not endless duration in time.

Trinitarian persons are distinguished only by relations of origin: generation (Father to Son) and spiration (Father and Son to Spirit); no distinction of essence, power, or will.

The Filioque: Latin tradition holds the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son; the East holds procession from the Father alone (or 'through the Son'), which was a central cause of the 1054 schism.

Two processions, three persons, four relations in Thomas Aquinas: paternity, filiation, active spiration, passive spiration; active spiration is not a distinct person, so four relations yield three persons.

Appropriation: attributes such as power to the Father, wisdom to the Son, and goodness/love to the Spirit are fitting attributions, not exclusive possessions of one person.

Creation ex nihilo excludes both an eternal pre-existing matter and emanationism; creation is the free act of the whole Trinity, and God creates neither out of need nor necessity.

Creatio continua: God's creative act is not merely initial but sustains creatures in being at every instant; secondary causality (creaturely action) is real and not a rival to divine causality.

Image of God (imago Dei): the human person is image by intellect, will, and capacity for relationship; male and female together constitute the image, and the image is fulfilled in Christ, the perfect image.

Hypostatic union (Council of Chalcedon, 451): one person, two natures, divine and human, united without confusion, change, division, or separation in the person of the Word.

Ephesus (431) condemned Nestorianism and affirmed Theotokos; Chalcedon's four adverbs exclude both monophysitism (confusion/change) and Nestorianism (division/separation).

Communicatio idiomatum: attributes of either nature are predicated of the one person, so it is correct to say 'the Lord of glory was crucified' and 'the Son of God was born of Mary.'

Anhypostasis/enhypostasis: the human nature of Christ has no independent human person (anhypostasis) but subsists in the person of the Word (enhypostasis).

Threefold office of Christ: prophet (reveals the Father), priest (offers himself in sacrifice and intercedes), king (rules creation and his Church).

Classic atonement models: Christus Victor (victory over sin, death, and the devil), satisfaction (Anselm), penal substitution (Reformation), and moral influence (Abelard); magisterial teaching favors a convergent, non-exclusive reading.

Soteriological terms: justification (being made righteous by grace), sanctification (growth in holiness), redemption (ransom from bondage), and divinization/deification (participation in the divine nature, 2 Peter 1:4).

Two wills in Christ: the Third Council of Constantinople (681) condemned monothelitism and affirmed a human will perfectly conformed to the divine will, without conflict.

Marks of the risen body: the resurrection is bodily and continuous with the crucified body (empty tomb, appearances, eating), yet transformed, glorified, and no longer subject to death.

Four marks from the Nicene Creed: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic; each mark is a gift of Christ and a task of the Church, not merely an empirical description.

Sacrament definition: an efficacious sign of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed (CCC 1131); effect ex opere operato depends on the minister's valid act, not personal worth.

Sacramental character: baptism, confirmation, and order imprint an indelible character and are received only once; this is why they cannot be repeated.

Matter and form: each sacrament has a determinable element and a determining word (e.g., water plus the Trinitarian formula; bread and wine plus the words of consecration).

Ministerial requirements: only a baptized male can be validly ordained (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, 1994); the ordinary ministers of baptism are bishop, priest, and deacon, with anyone permitted in danger of death.

Eucharist as sacrifice and sacrament: the same Christ is offered by the ministry of priests and offered by the faithful, and the modes of presence include the consecrated species, the assembly, the minister, and the proclaimed Word.

Four notes of the Church in Lumen Gentium: the Church subsists in the Catholic Church, and elements of sanctification exist outside her visible boundaries, ordered toward Catholic unity (LG 8).

Collegiality and primacy: the college of bishops with the pope at its head exercises supreme authority, and the pope possesses full, supreme, and universal power exercisable freely (LG 22; Pastor Aeternus).

Communion of saints: the pilgrim Church, the purifying Church (purgatory), and the glorified Church are united in one communion of spiritual goods and intercession.

Three fonts of morality: object, intention, and circumstances; the object chosen can make an act intrinsically evil regardless of intention (Veritatis Splendor 78-80).

Intrinsic evils (e.g., direct abortion, euthanasia, torture, deliberately contraceptive acts) are excluded by their object; circumstances and intention cannot rescue an evil object.

Double effect (Aquinas): a foreseen bad effect may be permitted if the act is good or indifferent, the bad effect is not the means, the intention is good, and proportionality holds.

Principle of totality and ordinary/extraordinary means: one may accept or refuse medical treatment; ordinary means are generally obligatory, extraordinary or disproportionate means are not.

Conscience: the subjective norm must be formed by the objective moral law; a person must always act according to a certain conscience but may never act against it, and culpability is reduced by ignorance not willed.

Catholic social teaching principles: human dignity, common good, subsidiarity, solidarity, preferential option for the poor, universal destination of goods, and care for creation.

Subsidiarity (Quadragesimo Anno, 1931): higher communities must not substitute for lower ones but should support them in cases of need (subsidium), while coordinating toward the common good.

Just war criteria (Gaudium et Spes 79; CCC 2309): legitimate authority, serious and lasting damage, last resort, proportionality, and discrimination between combatants and non-combatants.

Legitimate defense and capital punishment: CCC 2267 (revised 2018) teaches that the death penalty is inadmissible because non-lethal means are sufficient to defend society.

Liturgy is the public worship of the Church, the work of Christ and his body (SC 7); it is not private devotion, and public liturgy is regulated by the Apostolic See.

Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963): full, conscious, and active participation of the faithful is the aim; the vernacular was permitted, and the liturgy has a role as the summit and source of the Church's life (SC 10).

Seven liturgical families of the Latin Church (Roman, Ambrosian, Mozarabic, etc.) and Eastern Catholic rites: the rite expresses the Church's catholicity, and one may not freely switch rites without permission.

Liturgical year: Advent, Christmas, Ordinary Time, Lent, the Easter Triduum (Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday), Easter, Pentecost, and the sanctoral cycle.

Liturgy of the Hours: the sanctification of time through the daily prayer of the Church; the two hinge hours are Morning Prayer (Lauds) and Evening Prayer (Vespers), with the Office of Readings.

Forms of prayer: adoration, contrition, thanksgiving, and supplication (ACTS); discursive meditation, affective prayer, and contemplative prayer are stages of the life of prayer, not mutually exclusive methods.

Ignatian discernment: consolation and desolation are interior movements used to discern God's will; desolation is never a state in which one should change a previously good decision.

Contemplative prayer and recollection: infused contemplation is a gift, not a technique; the classic stages are purgative, illuminative, and unitive, described by John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila.

Sacramentals and popular devotion (e.g., rosary, stations of the cross, novenas) derive from the liturgy and dispose the faithful toward it, but they are not the liturgy itself.

Nostra Aetate (1965): the Church rejects nothing true and holy in other religions and calls for dialogue and collaboration, while proclaiming Christ as the way, truth, and life.

Lumen Gentium 16 and Dominus Iesus (2000): salvation is mediated by Christ alone, and other religions can contain elements of truth and grace ordered toward the Church, without being salvific paths equal to the Church.

Ecumenism: Unitatis Redintegratio (1964) distinguishes separated brethren by degrees of communion; full communion requires unity in faith, sacraments, and ministry, not uniformity.

Baptismal recognition: baptism with the Trinitarian formula in a separated community is valid, so mutual recognition of baptism is a real basis for ecumenical progress.

Dialogue with Judaism: the covenant with Israel is not revoked (Rom 11:29), the Church is grafted onto the olive tree, and supersessionism is rejected in post-conciliar teaching.

Dialogue with Islam: Muslims adore the one God, creator and judge, and venerate Jesus as a prophet, though they do not accept him as Son of God (Nostra Aetate 3).

Interreligious dialogue has four forms: the dialogue of life, of deeds, of theological exchange, and of religious experience (Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, 1991).

Ecumenical councils and dialogues: the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999) achieved a differentiated consensus between Catholics and Lutherans on justification.

Religious freedom (Dignitatis Humanae, 1965): the right to religious liberty is grounded in the dignity of the person and is to be respected by civil authority, within just limits of public order.

Secularization thesis (Weber's disenchantment, Berger's secularization) predicts religion's decline with modernity; post-secular critique notes the persistence of religion and the rise of 'believing without belonging' (Davie).

Gaudium et Spes 22: the Church reads the 'signs of the times' and holds that Christ reveals man to himself; cultural engagement is not optional but constitutive of mission.

Digital culture: the Church's call for a culture of encounter online (Benedict XVI's 2011 World Communications Day message) treats social media as a new areopagus requiring truth and charity.

Bioethics and technology: the Church supports scientific progress while judging techniques by the dignity of the person; e.g., research on human embryos, gene editing of germline, and transhumanism raise moral limits.

Media literacy and fake news: the right to accurate information and the duty to verify before sharing; communication is a moral act, not a neutral transmission.

Science and faith: Galileo and Darwin are the classic cases; Catholic teaching holds that truth cannot contradict truth, and evolution is compatible with faith in a creator God (Humani Generis, 1950; John Paul II, 1996).

Consumerism and the throwaway culture (Laudato Si', 2015): economic and environmental questions are linked; integral ecology treats the human person, society, and creation as one system.

Inculturation: the Gospel takes root in cultures and purifies them; the process is reciprocal, and the Church judges inculturation by communion with the whole Church, not by novelty.

New religious movements and sects: the Church distinguishes authentic religious freedom from manipulation; pastoral care addresses the psychological and social dimensions of belonging.